An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-23 ============================================================ Linda Nelson Murray (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel I wish Senator Ahearn massive congratulations. I was delighted to speak to him over the weekend. As Senator Ní Chuilinn said, we have heard so much about his mam and his beautiful family. I am sure they are all so proud. I wish him the best of luck for the next year and a half. There are a couple of things about which I want to speak. I was very proud to be in Navan over the weekend. We had the Midsummer Festival until 21 June, which was fantastic. It is the first time we have grabbed a festival and ran with it really well. I would like to thank Meath County Council for that and for helping with the funding and, obviously, the organisers, who are amazing people. It was wonderful to go around. NeuroFest was another massive festival, with 700 tickets sold. It is a festival for people with neurodivergence. It was really great to see that. I have just come from a meeting this morning with my colleague, Senator Ní Chuilinn. We met with representatives from FirstLight and Féileacáin. I would like to highlight the work done by both. I am familiar with Féileacáin, its memory boxes and the support it gives to bereaved families because of the death of a baby during or after pregnancy. It is amazing. It comes with first-hand experience of this. One of the ladies we met today, Mairie Cregan, was one of the seven people who set up Féileacáin. It was amazing to listen to her story. People would have known FirstLight as the Irish Sudden Infant Death Association in the past. The representatives spoke about the fact that FirstLight had 293 cases last year and had seen a 20% increase year on year in its services. It offers one-to-one counselling. FirstLight gets its funding from Tusla, the HSE and Pobal. Last year, it had to deal with five suicides of children under the age of 15. It is an organisation that helps people with the loss of children up to the age of 18. Suicide has become a big part of that. A figure of 64% of what FirstLight deals with is neonatal while the rest is sudden infant death syndrome, SIDS, suicide and loss of babies. What FirstLight is struggling with is that it does not have multi-annual funding. It does not know from year to year whether funding is going to be there to continue the service, which is obviously vital. I want to encourage this. I have hooked up with the Minister, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, and her adviser to get a meeting between FirstLight and the Minister. I want to highlight how important the service is, and if people like it could get multi-annual funding, that would be fantastic. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-23